Wildy strange and rather mesmerizing, The Plastic Priest is a tale of psychological unravelling done right. And right in this instance, is kind of sort of from zero to sixty in no time.
The story follows an Episcopalian female priest in a small, ugly, narrowminded town full of small, ugly, narrowminded people. She is fairly stuck there, in that place, in her job, the inherent limitations of both constantly getting in a way of her wanting to do good. So she decides to try something new, a form of community outreach. And ends up meeting someone who changes her entire life by making her reexamine her belief system and her raison d'être. The novella takes a turn around midpoint, going from realism to … something else. Surrealism? Either way, it’s a fascinating and harrowing psychological journey, and the author takes you on it expertly. Ninety minutes of thoughtful, thought-provoking weirdness was the reading experience here, So, recommended. Thanks Netgalley.
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“Mommy fiction” is so popular these days, across genres, that even … um …daddies are jumping on it?
The thing is parenthood is a terrifying concept. It has been explored tritely in a variety of thrillers and brilliantly in some darker, scarier ways like Katrina Monroe’s latest. And now Clay Chapman in adding to that pile, with a tale of very unconventional mothering of a very unconventional child. Southern Gothic is nature and tone, this novel is practically swampy with eeriness. A humid sot of a nightmare. The mommy here is Madi, who outside of raising a kid, has never made much of her life after getting knocked up as a teen. Now Madi’s back where she came from, Virginia, getting by on reading palms. Even her daughter has moved on, going to live with her more-situated-in-life dad. Madi meets an old crush of a hunky fisherman with sad eyes and proceeds to help him try to find his young son, who went missing as an infant. But if they do find him, what sort of a child would he be? And, perhaps more importantly What Kind of Mother would Madi be to him? I’m a fan of Chapman’s work, his last two books were very, very good. And this one is noticeably less so. Going by other GR reviews, I’m not in the minority here. WKoM is wildly uneven and not overly engaging. Chapman is a very good writer, that much is obvious and can be seen in this novel, too. It’s the plotting that drags here. For one thing, there’s barely enough of a plot for an entire 300-page novel. It’s more like one sustained watery nightmare. For another, I didn’t really care for any of the characters. The pacing was slow, but the book read fast, if that makes sense. Lots of dialogue, low word density per page, that sort of thing. And then toward the end, it did that weird thing where every chapter sort of read like the last one, but there was always one more after that. And then when you really thought it was done, there was an epilogue, too. So overall, not Chapman’s best, regrettably, and mostly worth reading only for the quality of the writing, not the story. Unless you’re really into the smothering mothering experience. Maybe the next one. What kind of a book would that be? This was an easy choice for me. I requested it the moment I saw it on Netgalley. I loved Ladies of the Secret Circus, and In love books about movies, particularly scary ones.
So I was unprepared for the uneven slog this novel turned out to be in reading. And subsequently finished it with very mixed impressions. Now I’m going to try to sort them for this review. 1.Way too long. Read long too, which is never great. 2.Way too many chicklit / women’s fiction vibes. Like WAY too many. No surer way to tank the book for me. The romance is tolerable, but so much of G’s perspective was just tediously girly. Which is …yeah, she’s only 22, but still… 3.Wildly overburdened with plot elements. The author had clearly gone in something like high concept via kitchen sink approach. That’s actually the plus and the minus of the novel at the same time. Overall, once you finished it and consider it in retrospect, it’s rather impressive. But while you’re in it, it often comes across as messy. I mean, historical fiction, movie making, romance, demons, vampires, time travel, alternate realties, fantasy, magic, realism, magic realism …whew. Kudos to the author for pulling it off but it was an effort to get there in the end. Overall, an interesting read. Took me a long time (for me) to get through. And definitely the sort of book I appreciate more with the rearview mirror perspective than I did while reading it. Conceptually fascinating. Strange, indeed, but likely to find an audience. Thanks Netgalley. There is a place that may or may not exist with a clock tower that may or may not be sinister. Or who are we kidding here? You know what kind of novel this is. You know the genre. The place is definitely there if you look for it. The clock tower is definitely evil.
But wait, there’s more. There’s an entire town and a very creepy mayor that’s dedicated to …arts, of all things. Yeah, creeps like the finer things in life. You can say it nourishes them. In a disturbingly literal sort of way. The novel opens in a rather clichéd fashion, with two girls/young women driving out of their way to the eponymous place for an art festival and a boy and stepping into some local-flavored cosmic doodoo. Not a particularly impressive beginning at all, even the language is like “towering clock tower.” But then the novel pivots very nicely. First off, it brings some adults in. Now the leads are the parents” the mother of one of the girls and the father of another. It’s been three years, and now, both of them get cryptic text messages from their daughters telling them to come find them. So, they do. They find the same creepy town, the same creepy clock tower, the same creepy mayor, and get properly embroiled in all that’s going on there. In size and mode and sheer number of characters, the novel is pretty epic. It’s very long. Too long for my taste, actually, but it reads pretty dynamically. I wasn’t particularly engaged with any of the characters, but the town intrigued me conceptually. In fact, the concept was fun enough for me to round up my rating of the book. Meyer is a competent writer with an impressive imagination, so his take on cosmic is pretty fun. All in all, a solid read with a lot to enjoy for genre fans. There is an inherent danger in getting to know your loved ones, a perpetual risk of disappointment. And yet, for X’s wife, it is the only thing that makes sense.
In life, X was conventionally perceived as a sort of artistic genius, a multi-disciplined creative of considerably cultural significance for several decades. X was a fine artist, writer, singer/songwriter. And yet for all her outspokenness and strong opinions, she had managed to remain an enigma. After her death, a biographer attempted to resolve the puzzle of X by publishing an account of her life. X’s widow, finding that account unacceptable, sets off to write her own story. That’s the premise of the novel, and it alone would have been enough for a compelling narrative, but the author (showing off because she can, because she literally IS that good) also threw in some serious world building. Specially, she set her novel in an alternate US that had separated in two in 1945 and did not reunite until many decades later. The South had ceded and turned into the exact kind of nightmare one might expect: a backward, insular, oppressive ruinous place. The North progressed at a familiar pace. X, we learn, was born in the southern territories and managed to get out. Since then, her entire life had been about reinvention, subterfuge, and new skins worn and shed. Artistically, it made her fascinating. Personally, it made her a complicated mess. And yet, for her wife, she was … everything. A woman worth loving, a puzzle worth unraveling. So this is the journey of solving the puzzle of X. Because in the end, perhaps people are only who they are as seen by their loved ones. A mesmerizing read, albeit not an easy one. It’s stunningly written and exceptionally clever in its interweaving of real and imagined, but it’s rather dense and doesn’t have much by the way of conventionally likable characters. More than anything, it’s really interesting. And interesting is often wins over nice. For this reader, anyway. Overall, certainly worth a read and a great introduction to the new (to me) author). Thanks, Netgalley. I’ve long been fascinated by the mystery of Dyatlov Pass. As with many unexplained things, speculative scenarios abound. And Alan K. Baker had managed to come up with the best one yet for my money.
I don’t have much expectations out of Lume books who specialize in reissuing old books, most of which don’t’ necessarily need or deserve a second go-around But this was really good (and not that old for a change.) Best one I’ve read from Lume yet. Yes, of course, it helped the subject of it lined up perfectly with my interests, but it was also well written, well researched, dynamic, clever, and original with vivid descriptions and strong attention to detail for authenticity. The key word is clever. So much speculation stretches credulity or flat-out insults intelligence, wherein Baker chose to base his theory in facts and reason. Very nicely done. Recommended. A very clever interweaving of Irish folklore and a generational family drama, this novel is a marvel. It took me a moment to get into the past narrative, but the other, more recent one, grabbed me from the get-go. Eventually, the two began to flow together seamlessly, though I still favored the latter.
I’ve read books about the changeling myth, and mostly those usually stick to the traditional formula of replaced babies, but here Sharpton (kudos to the author) chose to do something new and exciting. The TV show connection was really well done and creepy as all get out. What’s the creepy kids TV shows lately? Mister Magic stomped the same territory. Are people only now catching on to the fact that a lot of TV shows are inherently creepy, especially when viewed as adults? At any rate, this book was a pleasure to read. The author particularly excels in character development and writes strikingly engaging and realistic women of all ages and lesbians. Quite notable for a male author. In fact, he might write better lesbians than most female and/or lesbian authors do. But read it for the plot—it’s so interesting. Yes, it’ll take some doing to untangle all the narrative/character strands and make sense of it all, but it’s very well worth it, and you’ll have fun doing it. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley. I’ve read Craig Russell before. Only one book but it’s made an impression. And with this novel, I am now officially a fan.
It drew me in from the first chapter and didn’t release me until the very end. On a quest for a mysterious lost cinematic treasure, a movie expert finds an old woman in a desert who may or may not have the very last extant reels of the eponymous production. And from there on, the adventure unfolds, taking you back in time to the Golden Era of Cinema and beyond, to the bayous of Louisiana and a very unusual woman and her daughter branded as witches by the locals. Slowly but inexorably the storylines will collide into a dazzling mystery, a tale of obsession, revenge, and silver nitrate. If you watched Babylon and thought it was great, as I did, this is Babylon with a murder mystery. If, as I am, you’re a cinema buff, if you like historical fiction and stories that dance on the line between horrific and suspenseful, and are never less than thrilling, not to mention gorgeously written, this book is for you. Cleverly weaving in the real and imaginary, this marvel of a book will spellbind you as sure as any bayou witch. And the writing is just … oh so good. Russell handles descriptions like a fine artist, dialogue like a playwright, and language like a poet. But it is never overwrought or cumbersomely pretentious. Instead, it’s sheer beauty. Literary, elegant, epic. In case you can’t tell by now, I absolutely loved this book. Recommended to any reader of discerning taste. Thanks Netgalley. I've heard about Lee Mandelo’s Summer Sons, but having never read his work, I went into this novella with no expectations. I was just looking for a short audiobook for a beach day. (Just so you know: this is by no means a stereotypical beach read.)
I ended up taking a long walk that evening, despite being tired, just to finish listening to the book. Which is to say … yeah, it’s that good. Or maybe I did have an expectation? Maybe I was thinking this might be more genre-oriented. Well, it wasn’t. It doesn't seem to be genrefiable at all, though it does feature certain specualtive elements. Feed Them Silence is a character driven literary drama, one of the more stunningly and expertly crafted that I’ve read in a long time. It follows a neuroscientist who gets more and more involved in her work as her marriage dissolves around her. It’s harrowing, emotionally gutting, visceral in all the right ways, and precision-rendered to create a very specific claustrophobic world. In other words, it’s precisely what dark psychological fiction ought to be. And yes, it’s very difficult to put down, but fortunately short enough so that you won’t have to, which ever format you’re experiencing it in. If you chose to listen to it, the audiobook narrator did a very good job. All in all, a terrific introduction to the author, which certainly got me interested in reading more of his work. Recommended. Okay. If I hadn’t seen Jenning’s name on the cover, the first chapter of book three would have me thinking someone switched up the writers. The difference is that jarring.
From precision-cut, detached third person perspectives—the split screen narrative shared by Villanelle and Eve evenly thus far— the novel shifts to Eve’s POV. Additionally, there are exhaustive summarizations of the plot up to now. Why? Was Jennings’ goal to make it easy to jump into the series at book three. Again, why? To sell more copies? The books are terrific and short enough to absolutely be read in their entirety and in order. None of this weird, come in as you please nonsense. But then, once you get past it, it’s still fun. More often than not, it’s still the same amazing, dynamic writing. Yes, a large portion of the novel is dedicated to depicting a spectacularly messed up relationship, but hey, the course of true love … and all that. And that’s the draw here, isn’t it? In the TV show and in the books—it’s always these two people, as different as different can be on the surface who see each other and recognize their impossible yet perfect match. They live in a crazy world, faced with monstrous choices, and in the end of the day they always find their way and they always find their way back to each other. That’s pretty freaking epic. This book is definitely the odd one out. It’s messier, less consistent, more over the top, and all that. And yet, it’s still impossible to put down and very, very fun. And moreover, the author managed to do the thing BBC writers f*cked up so spectacularly and give the fans and his characters the ending they deserve. The man deserves praise for that alone. But really, it’s for bringing to life such terrific, original, and wildly memorable characters. I’ve had a blast with these books. I love these books. There, I said it. Psychopaths deserve love. I mean, that’s kind of the going theme here, really. At any rate, good, great, superb. Recommended. |
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